It’s Tuesday, and that means another episode of James vs. Games. This week, James is taking on the newly released Gears of War: Judgment, in an attempt to best a “Declassified” mission that has him racing against a ticking clock and an imminent Hammer of Dawn strike.

James’ mission: Defeat the Declassified Act 1 Mission 2, which comes with a time limit of four minutes. If he fails, James has to do 50 push-ups — into a pie.

And this episode even has a special guest! Kind of!

If you’re a fan of James vs. Games, don’t forget to like the video and leave a comment, as well as subscribe to the Game Front YouTube Channel, so we can continue to bring you more great shows and walkthroughs.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/james-vs-games-25-james-vs-gears-of-war-judgment/feed/0EXCLUSIVE: Watch Gears of War: Judgment’s First Hourhttp://www.gamefront.com/exclusive-watch-gears-of-war-judgments-first-hour/
http://www.gamefront.com/exclusive-watch-gears-of-war-judgments-first-hour/#commentsSat, 16 Mar 2013 00:36:48 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=211781Check out the opening of Gears of War: Judgment, only on the Game Front mobile app!

The entire first hour of the game is available exclusively through Game Front’s mobile app, Game Front Walkthroughs, for iPhone, iPad and Android. If you haven’t checked it out already, you should — it’s brimming with our video team’s walkthrough content, available in streaming HD quality for you to fire up wherever you are and whenever you need it. No more alt-tabbing between a video and the game you’re playing.

Find every secret, achievement guide, extra and easter egg for Gears of War: Judgment right here on our cheats page. Most games just don’t have cheats, so we’ve chosen to interpret the word more liberally with our coverage. Anything that’s considered secret, unlockable, and just plain cool gets linked below in our complete database. We’re always looking for more stuff to expand content, so keep checking back as the newest articles are placed below for your viewing pleasure.

Welcome to the text and video walkthrough for Gear of War: Judgment, where we’ll take you step-by-step through the singleplayer campaign. The story puts you in the role of Baird commanding his own squad during the beginnings of the war against the Locust Horde, Judgment focuses more on throwing tons of disposable bad guys at you instead of tough bullet sponge minions. There are new weapons, new enemies, and new bosses to tackle — and we’ll provide tips and insights into mastering them all. Keep checking back as we provide mission critical updates

“‘Judgment’ is a tribute to the die-hard ‘Gears’ fans who have been with us since the beginning and an amazing experience for anyone who loves intense action and gripping, cinematic storytelling. Thanks to the support of partners at People Can Fly, we’ve pushed the ‘Gears’ franchise in all-new directions while bringing back some of the key elements that put us on the map, and we can’t wait to share it with the world on March 19.”

Check out the trailer:

Gears fans in the United States will be able to join the fight against the Locust Horde early through Judgment’s new multiplayer mode, OverRun. Early access on Xbox LIVE begins March 15 exclusively to GameStop PowerUp Rewards members who preorder Judgment online or at any U.S. GameStop location nationwide, and the demo will be accessible to all Xbox LIVE Gold members worldwide once the game launches on March 19.

Epic Games president Mike Capps announced in December 2012 that he was stepping down from his position, but that he would remain in an advisory role with the company. In a message on his Facebook page today, Capps revealed that he is “no longer affiliated” with Epic Games. He wrote:

“When we announced that I wanted to transition out of my leadership role at Epic, the plan was for a continued but less active role, service on the board of directors, and ideally, being that eccentric semi-retired guy who still comes to playtests and gold parties. I’m sad to say that plans have changed, and as of February 11th, I’m no longer affiliated with Epic Games.”

Capps will remain an active member of the gaming industry, but his focus has shifted primarily to parenthood. He wrote:

“So what’s next for me? I’m a member of several game industry boards, and I’m proud to serve as an advocate for our art in Washington. I’m considering seats on a few company and advisory boards, as well as options for teaching at one of the world-class universities in the North Carolina Triangle area. And mostly, I’m focused on being a new dad in a few short weeks.

“I have many wonderful memories of my time at Epic, and I wish my friends there all the best in their future projects.”

The Creator’s Project has released a new video, this one offering an exclusive look at the writing behind Gears of War: Judgment and the two writers responsible for the narrative — Rob Auten and Tom Bissell, a former Hollywood editor and a war correspondent, who worked on the game’s close to 20,000 lines of dialogue.

Check it out:

Some choice quotes…

“Welding a story onto a game after the fact is never going to work.” That was deeply insightful to hear from a game series that revolves around killing aliens with chainsaws, and it’s so true — we can all think of games with tacked-on stories that we simply ignored. Unlike most games, these writers were brought in from the beginning to work alongside the developers.

“The story is actually moving through the levels; it’s not para-dropped on you through cutscenes.” More words of wisdom — games that rely on a magic visit from the exposition fairy during a cinematic rarely have solid stories.

“The really strange thing about video game writing is that you often don’t know if it works until it’s in the game. You actually have to play the game and get in there.” That’s a unique challenge for video game writers and actually explains why game writing, in general, is markedly inferior to other forms of media.

Yesterday, CliffyB took to his personal blog with an ammunition belt full of conventional wisdom. Over the course of a lengthy, meandering post, the former Epic honcho defended the game industry’s most controversial practices, particularly its clampdown on used games and its growing love of microtransactions.

His argument basically boils down to: “game companies have to make money and pay salaries, so they should do whatever works.” It didn’t convince us — see Phil Hornshaw’s response on this very site — but did it convince you at all? In this week’s Friday Flame Wars, we ask: can microtransactions and other newfangled revenue streams really be defended?

Former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski may one day return to the gaming industry, but not while the industry remains in this tumultuous state of transition.

Speaking with GamesIndustry International, Bleszinski explained that now would be “the absolute worst time” for him to return to the video game industry. He said:

“This business has not been in a state of transition like it is right now since the video game crash of the ’80s. I really think we’re in a massive state of turmoil. I think Nintendo could possibly be faced with the situation of becoming a company that only makes software moving forward. I think Sony and Microsoft are about to come to major blows. But at the same time, people love playing games on their iPad. The PC is going through a wonderful renaissance right now. I think we’re ready to do digital download games all the time… I just want to see what happens. In regards to the industry, it’s like the Super Smash Bros. of business right now, and I want to see if Peach or Mario wins.”

Bleszinski believes that if any of the major console makers hope to emerge victorious, they’ll need to adopt the qualities of more open platforms like the PC. He said:

“When Gears of War 2 launched and we found out that our netcode wasn’t working right, it took us three months to get an update out. By that time, the majority of users had moved on to the next game or had traded it in. If Microsoft and Sony are to do well in this next generation, they are going to need to reduce that time as much as possible, as well as continue to enable user-supported mods, independent games, and really just get rid of the wall that makes it incredibly hard to find those products, even if they’re allowed on the console… All that red tape needs to be stripped away in order to create an ecosystem to allow for a product like Minecraft to actually happen on a console.”

Would you welcome Bleszinski back to the industry, or are you glad he’s stepped down? I’d like to see him return, myself.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/bleszinski-industry-turmoil-worst-since-80s-crash/feed/1Gears of War Wouldn’t Sell With A Female Protagonist, Epic Claimshttp://www.gamefront.com/gears-of-war-wouldnt-sell-with-a-female-protagonist-epic-developer-claims/
http://www.gamefront.com/gears-of-war-wouldnt-sell-with-a-female-protagonist-epic-developer-claims/#commentsSun, 17 Feb 2013 19:16:00 +0000Ian Miles Cheonghttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=206956Gears of War with a female protagonist would be a hard sell, claims Epic Games dev.

The makers of Gears of War: Judgment don’t think a woman would make for a good protagonist. According to Epic Games’ art director Chris Perna, a female lead character would be “hard to justify” in any future installment of the series.

Speaking to the Official Xbox Magazine, Perna shared his belief that a Gears title with a woman at the forefront would hurt the game’s sales potential.

“That’s certainly interesting but I don’t know. If you look at what sells, it’s tough to justify something like that,” said Perna, who spoke at length about the series’ portrayal of women, whom he describes as “butch”.

“In Gears you kind of need dirt. If you want to create this attractive, stereotypical, sexy female—a lot of games do that and it’s kind of cliché at this point,” he said.

“You see the implants and the blonde hair and pants and you roll your eyes—it’s almost like the game geek’s idealization of what a woman should be. I think because we didn’t go that route we have more believability… we’ve got more butch characters.”

“They’re still feminine,” he went on. “Anya in Gears 3 comes across as being very feminine, and I think it works.”

Regardless of Epic’s decision to shy away from female protagonists, I can’t help but laud their decision to not sex up their characters for the sake of fanservice.

“My biggest regret was the launch of Gears 2’s online play. It was a huge mistake for everyone involved, unfortunately.”

Bleszinski went on to explain that he wasn’t responsible for much of the macho he-man vibe of the series, be it the thick-necked characters or their dialogue. He wrote:

“I had nothing to do with how buff the characters were. Epic at that time was very art direction driven as opposed to design driven, and Epic’s art director at the time, while talented, was very strong headed. (We never asked for the Corpser to have the “fingers,” he just put that in, and we had to design around it…not my preferred way to work.)

“I did have a hand in the writing of the franchise, but I didn’t write the day to day dialogue. In hindsight having the characters yelling things like “Shit yeah” while in the midst of a life and death situation might not have been the best idea. Still, it’s things like this that were a signature of the game.”

Microsoft has announced that Gears of War: Judgment will include a download code for the original Gears of War. The offer won’t last forever, however; only “initial launch quantities” of the game will ship with the download code.

Why the freebie? Research allegedly suggested that less than half of Gears of War 3 players had played the original.

Apart from the download code, pre-ordering Judgment will net you the Classic Hammerburst weapon, as well as an exclusive multiplayer skin at participating retailers, including Emergence Day Marcus, Emergence Day Dom, Alex Brand, and Anya.

Check out this new “The Guts of Gears” trailer for Judgment, showing off the game’s Declassified Missions and smart spawn system:

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/gears-of-war-judgment-includes-download-of-original-gow-vid/feed/0Gears of War Judgment: ‘Down But Not Out’ Only in Some Multiplayer Modeshttp://www.gamefront.com/gears-of-war-judgment-down-but-not-out-only-in-some-multiplayer-modes/
http://www.gamefront.com/gears-of-war-judgment-down-but-not-out-only-in-some-multiplayer-modes/#commentsSat, 15 Dec 2012 21:48:55 +0000CJ Miozzihttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=198331Single player will have it, as normal.

Gears of War: Judgment will include the series’ standard “Down But Not Out” (DBNO) mechanic in its singleplayer campaign, but the feature won’t exist in all of the multiplayer game modes.

Epic explained:

“DBNO (Down, But Not Out) is featured in the Gears of War: Judgment campaign. As for competitive and co-op multiplayer, a DBNO-like feature exists in OverRun, wherein the Medic class has the ability to revive teammates who are downed with our new stim grenade. The difference is they are stationary and are not crawling around. Grenadiers on the Locust side can go DBNO and then be revived by another Grenadier or a Kantus. And for obvious reasons, our new Free-For-All mode doesn’t feature any sort of DBNO. We have more modes to announce in the future, so we can only comment on the modes we’ve announced so far.”

Epic has yet to confirm or deny the existence of a Horde mode in Judgment, although given the mode’s popularity, it’s a safe bet.

Well, this is something of a shock. After a tenure lasting nearly 20 years, Cliff Bleszinski (AKA CliffyB, though he retired that nickname in 2008) has left his position as Design Director at Epic Games, effective immediately. The news was broken today on Epic’s official site. “Today,” the statement reads, “we are saying farewell with warm regards to Cliff Bleszinski, who is departing as Epic’s design director to chart the next stage of his career. During the past two decades, Cliff has helped shape many successful games that have captured the imaginations of millions of players around the world. We are grateful for his influence on Epic’s legacy, from the wild adventures “Jazz Jackrabbit” to the visceral combat of “Gears of War.””

This is going to change things at Epic Games rather significantly; Cliffy has been the face of the company as well as the driving force behind its most lucrative properties. Sadly for those of us in the Internet journalism biz, there’s no gossip; it’s amicable, and appears to simply be due to Cliff wanting to move on to new things. He had this to say about his departure:

I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I have been going non-stop. I literally grew up in this business, as Mike likes to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break.

I will miss the projects, the playtests, the debates, and most importantly, the people. Epic only hires the best of the best, and it has been a joy working with each and every one of you on a daily basis, whether you were hired weeks ago or decades ago. I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with a variety of disciplines, from code to art to marketing and PR – it’s been one big, rewarding learning experience. I’m confident that each project that is being built, whether at Epic, Chair, PCF, or Impossible will be top notch and will please gamers and critics alike.

He wasn’t kidding about having grew up in the studio – he started in 1993, when he was 18 years old, and has been there ever since. For those of you keeping score, no, you didn’t do anything remotely that cool when you were 18.

We wish Cliff luck on whatever his next game is, and we’ll be keeping an eye on his next move with great interest.

The Gears of War franchise is a juggernaut for Microsoft. The Xbox-exclusive, third-person cover shooter series is about as well known for its multiplayer as it is for anything else (at least in the case of the last two games). Perhaps this is why Microsoft is squeezing out yet another Gears game so soon after Gears of War 3. They’ve been talking up the multiplayer quite a bit, and at PAX Prime last weekend, I managed to spend some quality time killing and being killed by other players.

My hands-on session revolved entirely around the new multiplayer mode, Free for All. This commonplace mode has not been implemented into previous Gears games, so it was definitely a jarring experience for me – for at least the first few minutes.

I’ve played a lot of Gears 3 multiplayer, so I knew how to compete out there in the cutthroat arena. Even so, it’s disconcerting to think that you are completely alone. Cover wasn’t always the most feasible option during multiplayer team battles in past Gears games, but at least it offered some protection during multi-person firefights. Unfortunately, cover was rendered virtually useless in Judgement’s Free for All mode, where hiding behind a wall did little to protect you from the enemy who just spawned on your six.

It makes me wonder how successful such a mode will turn out to be. Movement in the Gears games has never been particularly quick. Combine that slowness with the awkward roadie run and the magnetic cover system, turn every character on the map hostile, and madness ensues. Most of my kills came from blasting away folks who were in cover or desperately trying to evade my assault rifle – but instead accidentally sticking to cover. Granted, these kinds of encounters happen in Gears 3, but not if you’re playing as you should – that is, with your team.

My personal qualms with the mode aside, I did notice a few significant gameplay mechanic changes during my session. For one, you no longer have to cycle through your weapons to throw a grenade. They’re now mapped to a single button, which increases the pace of matches. Weapon swapping is also much quicker, as you no longer have to fiddle with the d-pad – just press Y. These changes help you keep up with the frantic pace of Free for All, though the cover system and character movement speed felt exactly the same as it did in Gears 3.

It’s also worth noting that the maps used in Free for All have been specifically designed for that mode. As any multiplayer vet knows, map design plays a huge role when it comes to balance and fun. The map we played had several levels, tons of corners, and very short sightlines.

I may not be super excited about Free for All at the moment, but that doesn’t mean Gears of War: Judgement can’t turn out to be an incredible game. It will include all the standard multiplayer modes of Gears past, as well as new ones such as OverRun and others which have yet to be announced.